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reader," on account of his habit of incessant study. Comparing him with Xĕnŏcrătēs, he remarked, that the one wanted a spur, the other a bridle. On the other hand, Aristotle, in one of his writings, combating his former master's theory of ideas, lays down the maxim that friendship, especially among philosophers, must not be allowed to violate the sanctity of truth; and in a fragment of an elegy he calls Plato the first man who showed in word and deed how a man is to become good and happy.

After Plato had handed over his school to his sister's son Speusippus, Aristotle quitted Athens, b.c. 347, and repaired to his friend Hermeiās, despot of Atarneus in Mysia. When that prince had fallen a prey to Persian intrigues he withdrew, b.c. 345, with his wife Pythiăs, his friend's sister, to Mĭty̌lēnē in Lesbos; and two years later accepted an invitation to Macedonia to be tutor to Alexander, then thirteen years old. He lived at the court eight years, though his tenure of office seems to have lasted barely half that time. Both Philip and his son esteemed him highly, and most liberally seconded his studies in natural science, for which he inherited his father’s predilection. Alexander continued till his death to respect and love him, though the affair of Callisthĕnēs (q.v.) occasioned some coolness between them. When the king undertook his expedition in Asia, Aristotle betook himself once more to Athens, and taught for thirteen years in the Gymnăsĭum called the Lycēum. In the mornings he conversed with his maturer pupils on the higher problems of philosophy, walking up and down the shady avenues, from which practice the school received the name of Peripatetics. In the evenings he delivered courses of lectures on philosophy and rhetoric to a larger audience. After Alexander's death, when all adherents of the Macedonian supremacy were persecuted at Athens, a certain Dēmŏphĭlus brought against him a charge of impiety, whereupon Aristotle, "to save the Athenians from sinning a second time against philosophy"—so he is reported to have said, alluding to the fate of Socrates—retired to Chalcis in Eubœa. There he died late in the summer of the next year, b.c. 322.

Of the very numerous writings of Aristotle, some were composed in a popular, others in a scientific form. A considerable number of the latter kind have come down to us, but of the former, which were written in the form of dialogues, only a few fragments. The strictly scientific works may be classed according to their contents, as they treat of Logic, Metaphysics, Natural Science or Ethics. (1) Those on Logic were comprehended by the later Aristotelians under the name of Orgănŏn ("instrument"), because they treat of Method, the instrument of research. They include the Categories, on the fundamental forms of ideas: the De Interpretātiōne, on the doctrine of the judgment and on the proposition, important as an authority on philosophical terminology; the Analy̌tĭca Priōra and Posteriōra, each in two books, the former on the syllogism, the latter on demonstration, definition, and distribution; the Tŏpĭca in eight books, on dialectic inferences (those of probability); on Sophisms, the fallacies of sophists, and their solution.—(2) The Metaphysics as they were called by late writers, in fourteen books, consist of one connected treatise and several shorter essays on what Aristotle himself calls "first philosophy," the doctrine of Being in itself and the ultimate grounds of Being; a work left unfinished by Aristotle